Page 32 of Finding Her
“Please,” she begged. “For me, just try them on. You don’t have to buy them if you don’t like them.”
I couldn’t keep arguing with her forever. Lilah was too stubborn for her own good and there was no way she would go away until I just gave in. So I grabbed the stupid shorts, which looked fine from the front, but had “cutie” bedazzled on the butt,.
When I pulled them on, I realized they were barely longer than the ones that I had vetoed before, which gave me goodammunition for them. Although, when I stood sideways and looked at myself in the mirror, raising my arms, I had to admit they didn’t rise too high on my butt. Not enough that I thought I would get in extreme trouble for it.
Still, these weren’t good, and I wasn’t comfortable in them, and there was no way I was wearing them anywhere. But for the time being, I guess I could show off to Lilah. Even if with the crop top that I was wearing, it meant that half my body was showing.
I threw open the curtain and stepped outside. “Happy?”
“You look amazing,” Lilah said, and strangely, it seemed like she actually meant it, which I didn’t understand at all, because how could anybody look good in these?
“Spin around. I want to see.”
I suppressed a groan as I turned around, showing her the bedazzled side of the shorts. She squealed, and I couldn’t tell when I wasn’t facing her whether it was happiness or actually just laughing at me. I spun around again and put my hands on my hips.
“You are ridiculous, you know that? I mean, honestly, why would anybody?—”
I cut myself off as I heard footsteps coming up behind me. Loud footsteps. And I knew, without having to look, exactly who was there. Because if Crossy was in the store, then all the hockey players had to be close by.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was just coming to try on?—”
I spun around quickly so that he wouldn’t have a reason to keep staring at my butt, and then realized, as I did, that was a mistake because his eyes immediately drifted down to my bare stomach, and I crossed my arms over it to cover it up.
“She made me try them on,” I said, jerking my head at Lilah because I didn’t have a hand to gesture at her with. Bear just nodded once. His eyes were tight, and I wondered whetherhe thought that I shouldn’t be wearing shorts like this. Maybe he thought it was inappropriate. I was sure there were tons of people who did. But he just said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I can wait out there if you want.”
He glanced towards the opening towards the rest of the store. But then his eyes returned to me just as quickly, and his eyes ran up and down my legs.
Okay, maybe I had misread the signals. Maybe he didn’t think this was inappropriate, but he thought they looked... good. I really thought hell would freeze over before Lilah was right about how to seduce Bear. But clearly, I was wrong.
“Doesn’t she?” Lilah squealed. She bounced up beside me and threw an arm around my shoulder. “I mean, I think she should get these for gym class, don’t you?”
She was laying it on thick, her voice all sweet. I elbowed her in the side as subtly as I could. Bear dragged his eyes up my legs again, then landed on my arms crossed over my stomach before finally looking at my face.
“Yeah,” he said. “I agree.” And then he brushed past me, found an open changing room, and walked inside. There was a weird sound of metal scraping on metal as he pulled the curtain shut.
Lilah looked at me and mouthed, “Oh. My. Gosh.” I just elbowed her again. She laughed, and I immediately spun on my heel and ran back into the changing room, putting back on my regular long pants that I’d been wearing before. I was not buying these shorts. I was not wearing them to gym class. There was no chance in hell.
CHAPTER 22
poppy
I waiteduntil everyone else had left the locker room before I changed into my gym clothes, cursing Lilah under my breath as I did. I could never leave her alone with my stuff again. I would have to keep my gym bag in my locker, with a good lock on it that she couldn’t break into.
Because this girl—my roommate and supposedly one of my best friends—had raided my gym bag and taken out all my shorts except one pair.
Take a guess at which ones she left me with.
I stood in front of the mirror, looking at myself over my shoulder to see how obvious the bedazzlement was. Unfortunately, it wasextremelyobvious. Like so clear that there was no way anyone would miss it. Were these even dress code compliant?
To make matters even worse, the only shirt she’d left me with wasn’t the slightly oversized one I always wore, that probably could have covered most of my shorts. No, she’d replaced it with what I could only assume was a shirt meant for a ninth-grader based on the size, with the sleeves and bottom hem cut off. It just barely reached the top of the shorts, meaning if we were doing anything that invoked me lifting my arms or just generallymoving—you know, typical gym class activities—everyone was going to be seeing a whole lot more of me than I was comfortable with.
It might not have been that bad if it was just all the girls in my class, but the thought of Bear seeing me like this made me turn fire engine red. What was he going to think of me by the end of this semester? There was no chance he was going to have interest in me at all—he was probably going to just think I was the biggest freak he’d ever met. And I couldn’t even blame him for it, becausehello,look at me.
I took a deep breath and walked out of the locker room with all the confidence I could muster. There was only one thing I could do right now, short of pretending to be sick to my stomach and claiming that I needed to go to the nurse.
Own it, Poppy.
CHAPTER 23
